AT&T will kill 2G network by 2017 to clear spectrum for 3G and 4G

Customers will have to stop using 2G phones whether they want to or not.

AT&T today said it plans to switch off every last bit of its 2G cellular network by January 1, 2017, a move that will require migrating customers to modern devices and building out 3G and 4G networks. That means some people will have to upgrade their phones, because AT&T said the spectrum used today for 2G services will be reallocated to its 3G and 4G networks.

About 12 percent of AT&T's postpaid customers (that is, the majority of you who don't pre-pay for service) are still using 2G phones, AT&T said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which it discussed its plans. More than one-third of postpaid smartphone subscribers use 4G devices (on HSPA+ or LTE networks), while the rest are on 3G. Even those phones may sometimes have to rely on the older GSM and EDGE 2G networks in congested or remote areas, however. But the network upgrades should hopefully be good for everyone except those people who really, really want to keep their ancient phones.

"Throughout this multi-year upgrade process, we will work proactively with our customers to manage the process of moving to 3G and 4G devices, which will help minimize customer churn," AT&T said in the SEC filing.

AT&T said it is facing "significant spectrum and capacity constraints" in certain markets, which could affect quality of wireless voice and data services unless the Federal Communications Commission can "make new or existing spectrum available to the wireless industry to meet the needs of our subscribers." AT&T said yesterday it's getting more spectrum licenses as part of a purchase of NextWave Wireless, but today's SEC filing shows that switching off 2G services is a crucial part of its plan to set aside enough spectrum for 3G and 4G networks.

Good riddance, 12% of at&t using a 2G phone... Really I think that network providers net to be much more aggressive in shutting down networks. We just can't keep on keeping swaths of spectrum tied up for a relatively small portion to keep trucking along. This is the equivalent when we switched from DC to AC, many people had to use adaptors and/or get new equipment. Anyways, for fixed installation setups,they should have made removable radios, so you could move up a generation simply by switching a radio. Really, as demand Increases for mobile data, those who use less efficient standerds should be charged more.

Not just phones, but alarm systems and various remote telemetry stations... 2017 is right around the corner for a lot of that sort of near-proprietary technology. I predict a bit of butthurt.

Those folks went through that once before when AMPS was shut down, so I guess round 2 for them.

By now they should realize that this sort of change is a fact of life. Spectrum is scarce; we can't keep running old services forever.

I would hope that the people who make those systems would use some sort of modular design so that switching out the cell modem is trivial. Sure there is some expense in buying a whole bunch of new modems, but after that it should be a quick swap to upgrade the system to 3G/4G.

I wonder how this will affect T-mobile? If I recall I think t-mboile has a roaming agreement with at&t to use their edge network in big parts of the country where they don't own spectrum. They better roll out lte quickly

I get confused with exactly what 2G, 3G, 4G actually mean for different providers. Will this conversion mean that just EDGE is shut down so old phones will lose data service but still be able to use GSM voice/text communications, or will they lose all service?

I get confused with exactly what 2G, 3G, 4G actually mean for different providers. Will this conversion meant that just EDGE is shut down so old phones will lose data but still be able to use GSM voice/text communications, or will they lose all service?

I get confused with exactly what 2G, 3G, 4G actually mean for different providers. Will this conversion meant that just EDGE is shut down so old phones will lose data but still be able to use GSM voice/text communications, or will they lose all service?

Edit: Spelling.

I'm confused as to whether this will impact ATT pre-pay phones. The article talked about post-paid. I use a crappy little $30 pre-pay ATT feature phone. A G shows up on the screen everynow and then. I'm pretty sure it's not 3G, and I wouldn't be surprised if 2G was foreign to it, too.

So, in 2017, ATT will force me to spend another $30 on another pre-pay phone.

This will have a knock-on effect for visiting travellers to the US. The only major bands that are internationally compatible in the US are on 2G.

I'm pretty sure most smartphones that have been released recently support 850/900/1800/1900 3G frequencies (aka EU & US), so they'll be fine. My 2006 phone did at least. 4G/LTE on the other hand...well, hopefully within 5 years new phones will have all 75 frequencies the world is running LTE on.

They probably figure all the seniors who still use 2G only phones will be dead by 2017 so the switch off won't actually affect anyone.

More likely they're looking forward to forcing customers to buy new phones.

They can't. They can try and talk refuseniks into it all they want; and if performance starts sucking when they reach the intermediate 90% shutdown stage probably will mostly succeed in doing so. But FCC regulations require them to give a new phone to anyone whose old one stops working due to them shutting down services at no cost to the customer and with out any changes/extensions to their contract.

I think that rule only applies to normal voice phones; so people with home alarms (or other 2g data embedded devices) will have to spend out of pocket to replace them if they want to keep service. eg IIRC analog Onstar customers were SOL when the analog voice network was finally turned off.

Not just phones, but alarm systems and various remote telemetry stations... 2017 is right around the corner for a lot of that sort of near-proprietary technology. I predict a bit of butthurt.

Those folks went through that once before when AMPS was shut down, so I guess round 2 for them.

By now they should realize that this sort of change is a fact of life. Spectrum is scarce; we can't keep running old services forever.

I would hope that the people who make those systems would use some sort of modular design so that switching out the cell modem is trivial. Sure there is some expense in buying a whole bunch of new modems, but after that it should be a quick swap to upgrade the system to 3G/4G.

I doubt it. It would add $5-10 to the hardware cost now; and deny them a $500 replacement sale later. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if saving the engineering costs have resulted in some vendors still selling only 2g only alarms today.

I remember working for Charter when they forced every TV subscriber above local channels to get some sort of DCT. I thought those irate customers were bad, and they were getting the first three of these boxes for free. Why? To save space in that dumb pipe. This isn't much different. And maybe they will give out free phones too. They sell some old 3G and even 4G phones for free or .99 . They've got awhile before '17, and if they budget correctly I am sure they can afford it.

Considering that GSM is an ancient French technology (first GSM call was made in 1991) - at 26 years of age you have to get out..

Well, make that European technology. GSM (Group speciale mobile) was founded by CEPT in 1982, the first development agreement was signed by Germany and France in 1984 (soon to be followed by other countries) - and the first call in 1991 was made in Finland. But yes - by now it is really kind of ancient technology.

I get confused with exactly what 2G, 3G, 4G actually mean for different providers. Will this conversion meant that just EDGE is shut down so old phones will lose data but still be able to use GSM voice/text communications, or will they lose all service?

Edit: Spelling.

2G generally refers to all GSM/EDGE.

I just finished reading Wikipedia, and you are right. For AT&T and T-Mobile:2G: GSM/EDGE3G: UMTS/HSPA4G: LTEAnd all three of these are incompatible networks. I was under the mistaken impression that HSPA was a backward-compatible evolution of GSM, like EDGE before it (and like CMDA2000 was to CMDAone). So GSM will be completely dead after this.

I get confused with exactly what 2G, 3G, 4G actually mean for different providers. Will this conversion meant that just EDGE is shut down so old phones will lose data but still be able to use GSM voice/text communications, or will they lose all service?

Edit: Spelling.

I'm confused as to whether this will impact ATT pre-pay phones. The article talked about post-paid. I use a crappy little $30 pre-pay ATT feature phone. A G shows up on the screen everynow and then. I'm pretty sure it's not 3G, and I wouldn't be surprised if 2G was foreign to it, too.

So, in 2017, ATT will force me to spend another $30 on another pre-pay phone.

DAMN THEM!

They're shutting both GSM and EDGE down. The post-paid was just for statistical purposes to give a sense of what devices are out there, they didn't specify the percentage for pre-paid phones (it could very well be that the 2G percentage is higher among pre-paid phones). Anyway, since they said they're shutting all GSM and EDGE down, I assume that would affect all phones, not just postpaid ones.

I remember working for Charter when they forced every TV subscriber above local channels to get some sort of DCT. I thought those irate customers were bad, and they were getting the first three of these boxes for free. Why? To save space in that dumb pipe. This isn't much different. And maybe they will give out free phones too. They sell some old 3G and even 4G phones for free or .99 . They've got awhile before '17, and if they budget correctly I am sure they can afford it.

FCC regulations require them to provide a phone free of charge and without extension/change to their contract if a customer's phone stops working due to the shutdown of towers like this.

This is the way things go. As others have pointed out you don't see anyone providing analog cell phone service anymore. T-mobile is heading the same direction. They haven't announced killing it off completely but they will be refarming some of their current 2g spectrum to use it for hspa+.

I imagine that AT&T will target people using old phones for upgrade offers to try to get as many of them to upgrade as possible before they are forced to upgrade them because they have disabled 2g service. I do wonder what things will be like for the prepaid customers. AT&T doesn't have a contact with them so I'd imagine they could just cut them off and require them to buy a new phone as long as they were willing to deal with the bad press.